


The Long Arm of the Law

by wyrd_eater



Series: The Sartre Estate [2]
Category: Darkest Dungeon (Video Game)
Genre: A lot of.... dubiousness... in general, Alcohol, Animal Harm, Choking, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, M/M, Sexual Content, Violent References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:15:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26104804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wyrd_eater/pseuds/wyrd_eater
Summary: Sometimes, you get tired of running. Sometimes, you want to get caught, if only for a second, just to feel the bite of the trap around your neck.
Relationships: Bounty Hunter/Houndmaster (Darkest Dungeon)
Series: The Sartre Estate [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1939003
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13





	The Long Arm of the Law

**Author's Note:**

> Meet one of my favorite rarepairs. I wrote this instead of working on more serious projects, because their dynamic just wouldn't leave my mind. I think they'd have a surprising amount in common, despite how they feel about each other. I might expand on this later, but don't count on that.  
> Also, I included the tag 'animal harm' just as a precaution, as I don't want anyone who's especially sensitive to that sort of thing to be blindsided by it. If you're not one of those people, but you're still worried about the potential severity, rest assured that the Houndmaster's dog is not permanently or seriously hurt and does not die.

Tardif no longer bothers with covering his face. Even if he does survive the ordeals of this hellish hamlet, not even the juiciest, easiest bounty could persuade him out of his planned retirement. If some orphaned rogue with a sharp knife and a dull mind spots him here, then tracks him down and sticks him while he sleeps in his cozy cottage by the sea, then so be it. 

A crash resounds through the bar. Tardif looks up from his mug, his hackles raising and his vision narrowing in on the source. Boudica, their resident wild woman, has fallen off of a table. She cackles from the floor, her leather boots stuck up like crooked fenceposts. The pain won’t catch up with her ale-addled body for another day at least. Her companions cheer and clap at her failure, getting a good guffaw out of her misfortune before dragging themselves out of their chairs to help her up. 

Tardif chugs the rest of his foul drink in one go. He is far too sober if little incidents like that still prick his body spike with life-preserving intensity. By the time he lowers his mug, William has seated himself in front of him.

They had been on the last expedition together, along with the queer little physician and the almost as queer little scholar. At the time, Tardif had wondered why such slight things were allowed to follow them into such Light-forsaken places, but had quickly been convinced of their utility when the physician had thrown a powder into a leering brigand’s face that had sent him sent him down, frothing, onto the stone and the scholar had gutted a pig-man from gizzard to groin with a crooked knife. He can still smell its steaming entrails, and hear its twisted screams, neither animal or human...

His foot jostles against something solid. He is jolted out of a reverie he hadn’t been conscious of entering. He clutches for a hand-axe that isn’t there. The barman had started confiscating all weapons at the door after last week's incident. William gives him a yellow smile. Below them, something jingles. Tardif vents his urges through his nose.

“Don’t pay her any mind. Once she’s settled, she won’t bother you.”

Tardif isn’t fond of hounds. Never has been. He despises their hot breath, sharp teeth, keen senses, incredible speed, how they leap over every obstacle in their way, nose in every hiding spot, how they bite on the back of the neck and _shake_ … Tardif clears his throat and pulls his boots to the legs of his chair. This hound, though, this ‘Fergus’ as William calls it, has earned his begrudging respect. How can he not respect something that tears out the throats of abominations with such reckless ferocity?

“Didn’t come here for conversation.”

“Aye, I guessed that.”

Tardif stares. William’s tanned face is lined by years of hardship.

“But, perhaps, you could tolerate silent company? I don’t like to drink alone.”

Tardif pointedly slides his gaze to the hooting drinking party led by the blood-headed Boudica, who is currently arm-wrestling with a farmer. William follows his look over his shoulder. He turns back with a chuckle.

“I’d rather not end the night with a black eye.”

Tardif shrugs. “Do as you will, but don’t pester me.” He raises his hand, two fingers in the air. The bartender gives him a nod. Tardif lowers his arm.

William raises his tankard in agreement, then downs his ale.

-

“I swear, I swear it! I swear on my old mother’s eyes!” Tardif’s head spins, his body races with pleasurable heat, and his tongue flaps like an unlatched shutter in a storm. “Three Bankside ladies, all as pretty as you’d like, two in the cow suit and one sitting on a stool, going at the udders like a madwoman!”

William is doubled over the table, letting out deep guffaws that rock his entire body. “No!” The protest leaks out of clenched teeth.

“And… and the bastard, sitting there, cute as a button!” Tardif pauses for breath, sucking down air that tasted of sweat and wheat. “Innocent as a lamb, dressed up in a nightie, not a day over sixty!” He slugs down another tankard.

“What… What did you do?” 

“What was I meant to do?! Wipe his mouth, give him a firm spank, and send him home crying to his nanny?”

William collapses into helpless laughter once more, pounding his gloved fists on the table. He shakes his head.

“I kilt him right there! Cleaved his skull and sent his eyes rolling for good reason! The morts went screaming into the night, half-dressed, I took his signet ring as proof, and I went home rich as a king!”

William’s laughter bounces around their little table, deep and choppy. Tardif joins in with his own snorting laughs. His chest heaves with every one, as though they are being beaten out of him. William lifts his head and wipes at the tears that have built up in his eyes.

“I never picked up a story like _that_ while I… I was in the constabulary.” William peels off a bit of the mutton that the bartender had served them hours ago and drops it beneath the table. The hound's collar clanks as it snaps at it.

“Comes with the territory. You go after low-lifes without the law holding you back, you get to see what they really get up to. As it turns out, most of it is ab-so- _lute_ -ly loony. Not that those starched-collar bully club types are much saner…”

William’s heavy brows press together. He sighs, something which might have turned into a laugh had his mood not become severely dampened. “In another life, I might have swung on you for saying something like that.” He seeks the comfort of his tankard.

Tardif waves lazily at the bartender. So many of his fellow mercenaries are so gloomy, so weighed down by the crimes of the past. It’s all well and good to be somber and reflective while marching through a stinking sewer, but there’s no danger in this rotting tavern. Well, perhaps there is in getting a bruised body from a misjudged bar brawl, or a splitting headache the next morning, but nothing _real_. To Tardif, it seems as though people like William _want_ to wallow in their own misery. So be it. Maybe he can at least drag some entertainment out of the lawman.

“As I see it now, the law I tried to uphold never existed past where I could enforce it.” William is speaking to his tankard. The bartender arrives with a fresh pitcher of disgusting, blessed liquid, then departs. “I couldn’t believe… It falls apart so quick in the hands of evil men, but I built my…. built _everything_ I was… around it.”

“Aye. I worked with the law on occasion, as far as they could pay me, anyways-“

William huffs in amusement.

“-and I never held much kindness towards it.”

Tardif pours himself a fresh drink. William follows suit. Silence hangs heavy between them as Tardif takes several large gulps from his tankard.

“Have you always been a bounty hunter?”

Tardif lowers his drink. William has one hand beneath the table, no doubt scratching behind his mutt’s ears for comfort. He snorts. “I wasn’t born with an axe in my hand.”

“That’s not what I meant, you prickly bastard, and you know it.”

His tongue loosens before his mind can tighten. “I was a blacksmith’s apprentice for a few years as a whelp, near Hagsteeth. Didn’t take to it, so I ran off.” His back still bears the scars from that bastard’s generous use of the rod. They ache when it rains. But he had shown him.

“Had a brother who was a blacksmith in that province…” His eyes look through Tardif, through the wall, and to some point on the unseen horizon only he can identify. “Murdered. Never found out who did it.”

Tardif grunts and sloshes ale over his lips.

“You must’ve run away right about when the fifth crusade started.” His bloodshot gaze focuses intently on him. “Tough time for a boy to be on his own.”

Tardif shrugs. “Found work catching meat for a butcher in Londin. That suited me better. He paid me in the flesh he couldn’t sell and put a roof over my head.”

“Parents?”

Tardif’s eyes narrow. He leans back and thumps the tankard hard against the table. “What is this?”

William smiles, easy and stewed. “‘Pologies… This old hound’s still got his instincts. Ignore me.”

Tardif doesn’t need to be told twice. He slurps down the last of the ale in his tankard, tosses it aside, where it clatters and rolls across the floor. In the raucous bar, the racket might as well have been a drop of water in the ocean. The slumping walls pulse at the edges of his vision, numbing heat pawing at his cheeks. Tardif’s mind spins around his skull, touching nothing.

“I joined up as soon as they would let me.” William’s voice sounds distant, but he is close enough for Tardif to strangle, if he wanted to. “My old man was a chief inspector. Always seemed so heroic, chasing down bad men. Back then, I never thought twice about how he kept all five of us kept up in that manor, on a lawman’s pay… Funny how time changes the truth.”

Tardif grunts. “No. Money. ’S money that changes… changes truth. Money for killing, money for buttoning flap-jaws up… Money for rewriting the laws, the past. Nothing would happen if it weren’t for it.” He doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. His ale-bloated tongue waves for the sake of waving, riding high on a swell of drunkenness.

“Mm… There’s something truthful in that. A little too much for how flushed I am.” He lets out tapering chuckle, easing it out in little intervals. “I think… we aren’t too different, Tardif.”

“Funny.”

“What?”

“How that just now came to you. What do you think a constable is?”

“A man who’s sworn to-“

“Hog wash!” Tardif can’t contain himself. He grins, eager to get one over on the cheerless lawman. “Only difference b’tween a bounty hunter like me and a lawman - _former_ lawman - like you is that pretty little brooch they give you. I’ve met more honorable thieves than  honest constables! First sign of coin and suddenly the law might as well be a madman’s scribbles for all you lot care. Not that it ever made much sense anyways. Laws’re only ever made to keep the lords safe and sound.”

William had become progressively redder and redder over the course of Tardif’s ramble. He has a settled sort of rage in his eyes. Tardif blabbers on, compelled by the same impulse that drives a child to poke at hornets’ nests with sticks.

“At least I’m honest. Give me a big enough satchel of coin and I’ll make you your own justice, tailor-made just so to suit you. Men, elders, children, women! Doesn’t matter to me. Doesn’t matter to anyone. Money is the only law anyone cares about.”

William’s shoulders are trembling. “You don’t think... I tried?” His voice is low, wavering, barely kept together. “You don’t think I didn’t try to keep the law fair? Punish the wicked? Save the innocent?”

“Nothing’s innocent,” Tardif counters. He reads the righteous indignation on William’s face as clearly as he reads a signpost. “You’re certainly no innocent. How many bribes have you taken, dog? How many times have you looked the other way while-“

William stands abruptly and slams his fist down on the table, hard enough to shake it. Tardif watches with a relaxed sort of readiness, hand straying down to his right boot, inside which lurks a concealed dagger. Always expect a fight. Always expect to win.

“I _had_ to!” he shouts. “What else was I supposed to do when everyone from the Duke to his lowest scullery maid was in on it?! Put the whole damn town in jail?!”

Tardif has no idea what the washed-up lawman is talking about, but he rolls with it. “You at least took the hush money, right?”

William flinches as though he had been struck. It had been a random remark, little more than a guess. Yet, it had clearly hit somewhere _tender_. A weak spot.

Tardif snorts. “I see. More like your father than you think-“

William lunges over the table. In his torpor, Tardif fumbles for his knife a moment too long, giving William the opening he needs to bunch his collar in his hands and haul him from his seat. The beast growls and digs its teeth into his leather boot. Tardif watches from over his own shoulder as William pulls his fist back, then drives it into his nose with a sharp crack. Tardif sees double, triple. He savors the taste of blood dripping down the back of his throat.

Finally. Some excitement.

William pulls back for another strike. It never lands. Tardif seizes William’s shoulders and rolls to the side with all the force he can muster, forcing the lawman off of the table and onto the filthy floor. They scramble like rabid dogs, knees shuffling for position and knuckles scraping across every soft spot within reach. Tardif gags as William’s knee connects with his gut, then pays him back with a hefty punch to his side, right about where the kidneys should be. Meanwhile, the mutt has long since given up on Tardif’s boot and is barking loud enough to raise the dead. Out of the corner of his eye, Tardif sees the hound crouch, tense its muscles…

He blocks its jaws with his forearm, his other hand wrapped tight around the lawman’s throat. Two sets of razor teeth pierce cloth and puncture skin. He casts the dog aside, knocking it hard against the side of the table. It releases his arm with a whimper.

“I’LL KILL YOU!” William roars, surging up with a strength that Tardif didn’t know the old man had. He is unbalanced, reeling. The room dips, spins, and then he’s the one pinned underneath, with a man’s hands around his throat. He grins wildly, blood leaking through his teeth, as spots form at the edges of his vision, as his heartbeat pounds in his ears, as everything begins to blissfully fade away…

“That’s ENOUGH!”

The bartender’s massive hand hauls William off of him as though he weighs no more than an urchin. Tardif gasps down air as the numbing touch of oblivion leaves him. He coughs, his eyes streaming with tears, and forces himself to roll over and push himself up.

The bartender pushes William away from himself. His square face and greying mustache bristle with rage. “You’re both _done_ for the night! Now, GET OUT!”

William and Tardif stare at the bartender, in a haze of drunkenness and adrenaline. The hound is howling. Tardif’s ears are ringing. Boudicca is hooting from some distant corner.

“I said OUT!” The bartender’s arm, as big around as a young tree, points to the door that leads out into the alley by the stagecoach. “And take that damned mutt with you!”

William staggers forwards first. He whistles to the dog as he passes it, holding onto tables and chairs for stability as he goes. It doesn’t obey at first, still snarling and snapping at Tardif. William whistles again, louder, and the beast finally complies with its tail between its legs. Tardif goes after, his face loose and his trousers tight. He grabs his axe from the rack near the door and shoves it through the loop at his belt.

He emerges into the starless night. William is kneeling next to his mutt, stroking over its mangy fur. He looks up at Tardif as he exits, eyes flicking down him, then back up. He laughs derisively and turns back to his hound.

“I see now why His Lordship had you banned from the brothel.”

Tardif snorts at his own state, knowing that it is useless to deny it, and clumsily adjusts the front of his trousers. “Buncha frigid nuns,” he grunts, staring down at the thinning crown of William’s head. It would be so easy… One swing with the axe would split it clean in two. There has to be at least one brigand out there with a grudge against the ex-constable and coins burning a hole in his pocket. Do that, though, and you’re out of a job, he reminds himself.

William stands slowly, grasping at the wall. Even so, he stumbles and nearly trips over his own hound. He catches himself just before he collides with Tardif. William’s sloppy footwork has left them close together, uncomfortably so. 

“Back up,” Tardif barks.

“No.”

Tardif takes a step forwards. They are close enough to smell each other’s foul breath. His hand strays downwards and is delighted to feel the firmness of his axe there. No more schoolyard brawling. Tardif lets the silence hang between them for a moment as he considers the best way to put this lawman in his place while still getting what he wants. He wipes at the blood that still leaks from his nose with the back of his other hand. 

“That brother of yours…” he begins slowly. “Was he a big fellow? Bristly brown hair? Lazy eye? Meaner than a one-eyed cat?”

William doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. The slow cresting of realization across his face says it all. Tardif runs his tongue over his lower teeth. What a fortuitous coincidence.

“Would you like to know what his last words were? Before I beat his head in with his own hammer?”

Fingers curl around Tardif’s throat, looming up from his blindspot. He flinches, wraps his hand around his axe. A little groan dies in the back of his mouth. As sure as the geese fly south for winter.

“I should kill you.” William’s thumb digs into his pulse point. It flutters underneath his nail like the wings of a baby bird. Tardif squeezes his eyes shut to hide how they roll as William tightens his grip. What bliss it is to skip along the line between life and death… “You would deserve it. Light knows who else you’ve slaughtered.”

“Slaughtered?” Tardif manages. He opens his eyes. William’s gaze is wandering over his face. “Your brother took a special pleasure in…” He swallows and savors the rasp of pain that follows. “…beating his apprentices until they bled.”

Anger flashes across William’s eyes and pulses through his arm. His hand squeezes tighter. Just as Tardif had hoped he would react. “You’re lying.”

“I have…the scars… to pr… prove it…” He can barely talk now. His mind is soaring and his body is flooding with warmth. His instincts are trying to galvanize him into self-preservation, but he is too busy reveling in his exquisite helplessness. Just a few moments longer, then he will dislodge William’s hand, and show him what kind of reward waits in store for those who cross him. 

William cuts off his air entirely. Tardif’s legs go weak. His lips part in an attempt to take in breaths that will not come. His entire body is humming, pulsing, racing with little hot and cold pinpricks. His mind is fuzzy and vague, whittled down entirely to sensation and reaction. The balance tips further into darkness. Tardif reaches up and grabs at William’s wrist, scrambling for a steady hold. He’s aware of an approaching precipice, a point-of-no-return, but cannot care when he is so overtaken with bliss. In fact, he relishes its approach and the absolute debauchery it brings with it.

Breath rushes down his throat. Tardif collapses onto his knees, heaving and gagging as his starved lungs try to suck down too much air at once. His neck is throbbing with the afterimage of William’s callused hand. He traces his own hand over it. It will bruise tomorrow. His eyes are overflowing with tears. They splatter against the cobblestones. His lower half trembles at the sudden denial.

“Scum,” William spits. Tardif digs his teeth into his lower lip hard enough to draw blood. _Yes_ , hisses the darkest corner of his mind. _Hate me. Kick me. Grind me into the gutter._ He looks up at William. The man’s form shifts and blurs.

Tardif rasps out a laugh that quickly devolves into a cough. “Y…You… like… it… Don’t… you? Pun-…” He wheezes, his throat constricting. “Punishing… the wicked…”

His vision clears just enough to spot the look on William’s face. Half-disgust, half-vulnerability. So easy. So predictable. William turns from him and stumbles away down the main lane of the hamlet. His hound trails after him, occasionally stopping as he uses its broad back to steady his uncertain path.

Later that night, houndmaster and bounty hunter satisfy themselves in the darkness of their respective rooms to the same memory of scarred knuckles wrapped around a stubbled throat.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! This was a lot of fun for me to write, so I hope you had just as much fun reading it. Comments are always appreciated!


End file.
